Ode to Walt Whitman

By the East River and the Bronxboys were singing, exposing their waistswith the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.

Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocksand children drawing stairs and perspectives.

But none of them could sleep,none of them wanted to be the river,none of them loved the huge leavesor the shoreline's blue tongue.

By the East River and the Queensboroboys were battling with industryand the Jews sold to the river faunthe rose of circumcision,and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptiedherds of bison driven by the wind.

But none of them paused,none of them wanted to be a cloud,none of them looked for fernsor the yellow wheel of a tambourine.

As soon as the moon risesthe pulleys will spin to alter the sky;a border of needles will besiege memoryand the coffins will bear away those who don't work.

New York, mire,

New York, mire and death.

What angel is hidden in your cheek?

Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?

Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones?

Not for a moment,

Walt Whitman, lovely old man,have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,nor your thighs pure as Apollo's,nor your voice like a column of ash,old man, beautiful as the mist, you moaned like a birdwith its sex pierced by a needle.

Enemy of the satyr,enemy of the vine,and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth...

Not for a moment, virile beauty,who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads,dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a riverwith that comrade who would place in your breastthe small ache of an ignorant leopard.

Not for a moment,

Adam of blood,

Macho,man alone at sea,

Walt Whitman, lovely old man,because on penthouse roofs,gathered at bars,emerging in bunches from the sewers,trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe,the faggots,

Walt Whitman, point you out.

He's one, too!

That's right!

And they landon your luminous chaste beard,blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,crowds of howls and gestures,like cats or like snakes,the faggots,

Walt Whitman, the faggots,clouded with tears, flesh for the whip,the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers.

He's one, too!

That's right!

Stained fingerspoint to the shore of your dreamwhen a friend eats your applewith a slight taste of gasolineand the sun sings in the navelsof boys who play under bridges.

But you didn't look for scratched eyes,nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children,nor frozen saliva,nor the curves slit open like a toad's bellythat the faggots wear in cars and on terraceswhile the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror.

You looked for a naked body like a river.

Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed,father of your agony, camellia of your death,who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator.

Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delightin tomorrow morning's jungle of blood.

The sky has shores where life is avoidedand there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.

This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.

Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,the rich give their mistressessmall illuminated dying things,and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desirethrough a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.

Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Timea breeze that drowses in the branches.

That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,against the little boy who writesthe name of a girl on his pillow,nor against the boy who dresses as a bridein the darkness of the wardrobe,nor against the solitary men in casinoswho drink prostitution's water with revulsion,nor against the men with that green look in their eyeswho love other men and burn their lips in silence.

But yes against you, urban faggots,tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts.

Mothers of mud.

Harpies.

Sleepless enemiesof the love that bestows crowns of joy.

Always against you, who give boysdrops of foul death with bitter poison.

Always against you,

Fairies of North America,

Pájaros of Havana,

Jotos of Mexico,

Sarasas of Cádiz,

Apios of Seville,

Cancos of Madrid,

Floras of Alicante,

Adelaidas of Portugal.

Faggots of the world, murderers of doves!

Slaves of women.

Their bedroom bitches.

Opening in public squares like feverish fansor ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes.

No quarter given!

Deathspills from your eyesand gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge.

No quarter given!

Attention!

Let the confused, the pure,the classical, the celebrated, the supplicantsclose the doors of the bacchanal to you.

And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's bankswith your beard toward the pole, openhanded.

Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls forcomrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle.

Sleep on, nothing remains.

Dancing walls stir the prairiesand America drowns itself in machinery and lament.

I want the powerful air from the deepest nightto blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep,and a black child to inform the gold-craving whitesthat the kingdom of grain has arrived.